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Thrilling Reminder of Old Coney Island

RELIEF The City Critic with Angie Pontani, who is known as Miss Cyclone, left, and Jen Gapay, in back. Credit
Yana Paskova for The New York Times

From 85 feet up, the view of Coney Island is so good you can almost see the future. You can get the Boardwalk, but also a sense of the crowds that will soon fill it. The sun peeking through the clouds, but also an image of the beachgoers who will soak it in. The familiar attractions like the Parachute Jump, and the new development that after years of controversy will make its debut in May.

I might have seen all that myself, and felt the joyous release from winter’s icy grip. But I was in the front seat of the front car of the Cyclone, steadily ticking my way up to that first awful drop. I could see only doom.

The storied roller coaster emerged from hibernation a week ago, an early annual harbinger of summer. The Coney Island that officially opens on Memorial Day weekend (and unofficially, on Easter Sunday) will be a different place, however, from the one that closed on Labor Day. Over the winter, Central Amusement International of Parsippany, N.J., leased 6.2 acres of amusement parks, which the city had previously purchased from Thor Equities, to develop and run. The first parcel to be overhauled was Astroland, a history-soaked plot opposite the Cyclone. In place of Astroland’s anachronistic delights, Central Amusement is installing a fleet of shiny new attractions. The area will be rechristened Luna Park, after one of the world’s first amusement parks, which once stood on that spot. For purists, the changes are a tragedy. For others they may be an opportunity.

For me, they were irrelevant. The Cyclone car was starting to tip forward over the crest of that first hill, and I was about to die.

Along for the ride and moral support was Miss Cyclone, otherwise known as Angie Pontani, a burlesque performer whose look falls somewhere between those of Betty Boop and Bettie Page. Rob Lenihan, the author of the blog Luna Park Gazette — who despite a 52-year love of Coney Island had chosen until then to avoid its most famous ride — sat in the second row.

Over the preceding days, rain had swollen the roller coaster’s wooden tracks, so as a precaution the staff spent the early afternoon taking practice runs. The burly men, piled in for added momentum, kept having to climb out and push the car — like a Hyundai with a dead battery — up and over the next big hill. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” Mr. Lenihan said more than once. Still, when the all-clear came, he had accepted my invitation to climb on board. Now he was screaming “Oh my God, oh my God” — slowly, as though literally summoning the attention of the almighty. I was digging my nails deep into Miss Cyclone’s angora-clad arm.

Designed to fit a small urban footprint, the Cyclone is a series of unusually steep peaks and valleys. On the way down that first 60-degree slope, everything you’ve learned about gravity tells you the car will fly off the tracks and tumble end over end. The rickety wood-and-steel construction, an 83-year-old vision of steampunk terror, is no solace. The ride’s Web site claims, “Many believe the roller coaster continues to improve and run better year after year!” Many more, I’d wager, do not.

Photo

The City Critic with the blogger Rob Lenihan.Credit
Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Carol Hill Albert, president of Cyclone Coasters, swears it’s all perfectly safe. A slender redhead who declines to give her age, Ms. Albert is Coney Island royalty. Her father-in-law, Dewey Albert, founded Astroland in 1962 and ran it with her husband, Jerry. But Ms. Albert was in charge when Thor Equities approached with an offer to buy. She turned them away, hoping to develop the site herself. Eventually she had to admit that it was too hard. When Thor surprised her with a second offer, she reluctantly put the beloved old rides in storage and sold, as several other proprietors already had.

Now she watches from across West 10th Street as bulldozers prepare the site for its next incarnation.

Right now, it’s a three-acre plot of soil, piled with broken concrete and old rusty pipes. By May 29, it is supposed to be the home of 19 world-class rides, the first of many more attractions that Central Amusements plans to install around Coney Island, at a cost that already exceeds $20 million.

The company’s president, Valerio Ferrari — who with his business-casual attire and elegant northern Italian accent would never be mistaken for an old Coney hand — carries a BlackBerry loaded with video simulations of those rides. He sounds especially proud of Air Race, which “brings the acceleration to the limits you can put on a human body.” It sounds unpleasant, I offered. “Extremely,” he said with a giggle.

Every time I ride the Cyclone I swear I’ll never do it again. Then a couple of years later I’m lured back by its low-tech charm and its rich history. This time, as the car swerved for the final punishing curves, my own terror and the misery I had so evidently inflicted on Mr. Lenihan were almost more than my brain, flattened against the back of my skull, could process. Tears were working their way up when the end of the ride came into view.

The deafening clatter quieted to a rattle, the car rolled to a stop and then, just one minute and 50 seconds after it started, it was over. I got out. I think I was laughing.

As for Mr. Lenihan, he’d returned to full sentences. “It was a controlled nightmare; it was a joyous freak show,” he said. “I think I accomplished something. I don’t know what.” He added, for the record, that he’d never do it again.

Miss Cyclone says repetition is the only way to make the Cyclone fun. I can see the logic in that — and the ride’s design, which places the worst stuff first, then tapers off to the merely agonizing, even encourages you to think you’re mastering your fears. But I’m never going back on the Cyclone. Until next time, of course.

E-mail: citycritic@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on April 4, 2010, on page MB4 of the New York edition with the headline: Thrilling Reminder Of Old Coney Island. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe